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With the recent announcement of Ubuntu for Android we may hope again that full-blown desktop Java applications may become usable on Android devices.

As you may know, Ubuntu for Android will provide a complete desktop environment for Android phones, tablets and smartbooks. The nice thing is that this environment will be pretty much integrated with Android (like network management for the 3G connection and wifi).

The Ubuntu desktop will be able to run not only traditional Linux desktop applications like Open/LibreOffice and GIMP but it will also be able to execute desktop Java applications like TimeSlotTracker, MindCraft, TED and even developer IDEs like Netbeans (at least I don’t see any reason why not).

I have already tested Oracle’s Java SE Embedded on my HP Touchpad (under the WebOS / Ubuntu combo available for it) and I am fairly satisfied with its speed and stability.

I imagine Java SE Embedded from Oracle will be possible to install on Ubuntu for Android aside from the Java implementations available from the repositories (IcedTea and OpenJDK). The Java SE Embedded is downloadable as a standalone installer from Oracle’s Java SE Embedded pages.

It would be nice if Canonical could include an easy way to install the Oracle’s version of Java SE into Ubuntu for Android in order to make it simple for everyone to install Java applications. However, even if this doesn’t happen you will have the option of easily install OpenJDK/IcedTea from the package manager (which should suit most desktop apps) and install the Oracle JRE if the former don’t work well with your apps.